EQ2 uses PS/VS 1.1 only

and here i feel the same way about wows art direction .


l2 is anime

wow is cartoony

eq2 is more realistic .


I'd take the more realistic style

 

Sorry, I agree with Hovz and Oi. EQ2 just doesn't look as good as it should for how demanding it is. It's competitors, especially WoW and Lineage, look better minus snazzy goofy pixel shaders and whatnot.

Another big example: I think WoW's water that isn't pixel shaded looks as good as EQ2's pixel shaded water. And guess what, WoW does the job without really impacting your performance. You shouldn't use a graphics feature just for a bullet point on the brochure. It should really benefit the gamer, and a lot of the things EQ2 does to reduce your performance aren't worth it.

I'm not judging the quality of the game since I don't play any MMORPGs. I'm just saying that from what I've seen of it in motion at friend's places that it isn't all that impressive technically. Especially after they boasted about it like crazy and used lame buzzwords like "uses the water from Titanic" to help the plain folk understand what a pixel shader is.

Wouldn't you rather have high resolution textures on people and the environment instead of all that lame wax coating on the characters? Stuff like that really bothers me. They went out of their way to make use of features they didn't know how to make look good.

IMO, Morrowind is way ahead of EQ2's supposed "realism". I am all for realism and you are right in that WoW and Lineage aren't in that style category, but their styles are better executed that EQ2's realistic style. EQ2 looks like fantasy plastick happy world to me. I'd go as far to say EQ2's textures are just as low resolution as Morrowind's, and Morrowind came out in 2002.

EQ2's atmosphere is poor for the most part. The soundtrack is just awful IMO. It is WAY too "active" for a game where you will spend hundreds to thousands of hours playing. It would work well in a fantasy movie, but not in a game.

And the loads of speechovers are yet another pointless marketing point that add nothing to the experience. They are distracting and annoying.

 

I"m sorry your trying to claim that the water from wow is as good or better than eq2s water ?

This water ?!?!?!




I'm sorry , thats just bull . Eq2s water is on par with farcrys water

 

Certainly not with texture quality set to max, just that most cards don't handle that too well. You have to remember that Morrowind only needs a diffuse colour texture while in EQ2 all surfaces also need a normal map and possibly other texture maps as well (e.g. specular). And I would certainly sacrifice a bit of texture resolution to greatly enhance the percieved geometric detail (via normal mapping). And Morrowinds art direction was about as bad as that in EQ2 (IMO). Neither are anything special from an artistic point of view (I really like the style used in Lineage2 based on those screenshots but I guess that figures since I'm a big fan of anime). Art is highly subjective though, there's no point arguing over art direction since everyone will have their own opinion.

 

You know JVD I think the WOW picture you posted does look better actually You should picka better set.

 

heh , they are off the www.worldofwarcraft.com site .

And if you believe that watter looks better than eq2 water , i got a bridge to sell ya

 

I really should turn on Flora. But I just cant help but think my CPU is too slow for it. Wonder if instancing would help Flora. Anyway people look at the EQ 2 screenshots and go "Omg Plastic". But you guys have to see these models in motion. EQ 2's animation quality is just awesome. The way the charactors move is fluent.

Actually WoW does use pixel shaders to add a specular effect to its water.

 

Frankly, I'm just glad some game has WANTED to try to aim at more realism (and yes, it does sound funny talking about an epic fantasy game that way, but you know what I mean ) than falling back on extreme stylization. We already have plenty of others that do and/or have to already. Vanguard looks like it's going to be aiming in that direction as well, which is good. (Haven't seen enough of it yet, though.) There's plenty of options already from the other.

Every scene doesn't need every hue of the rainbow in it to look good. They don't need to look like they've been clipped out of an animation cell to look good.

The world around is, quite honestly, tends to be drab and muted. Light does not scintillate off every surface, cause lens flares, or light up everyone perfectly. The people are more haggard, have more variety, have imperfections...

I like getting sucked in to these games. Outlandish is nice, but wears quickly and always reminds me I'm playing a game. The less I feel I'm "playing a game" the more I'm enjoying "living in the world."

 

Here is malvolio the turtle slayer

(just a mob that was around me at the time )


this is between very high quality and extreme quality

2x fsaa , 16 aniso 1280x1024


http://www.ooakalabeth.com/video/

ITs now up for download

 

Seems to have failed.

 

still uploading from my end , no clue why its taking so long , but whatcya going to do

 

Beastfuq your ISP?

 

optonline is my isp , cable modem , but it is a 50meg file . So i dunno

 

it finaly finished 77megs hehe

 

WTF?! It certainly downloads fast! (Average 430KB/s)



Argh... I'm packed with codecs, and yet there are still some things that just have problems showing me video! What did you use?

 

fraps.com

 

Well I certainly had it installed. Quick uninstall/reinstall took care of it at least. Blah...


So you actually mouse over your commands to press them? What on earth for? Those are hotkeys for a reason! Hehe.

(BTW: Are folks still hitting EQ2 tonight? Or already have?)

 

eq2 has a wierd problem the last few weeks where hot bars don't save right so the commands keep resting . So i don't bother to remember them anymore


anyway yea john should be on and i'm about to jump on now

 

Ok, well if you're not on the identities I stuck on my friends list, just keep an eye out for cthellis. ^_^

 

lol cuz eq2s textures look so good right? every single pic chris ray posted looks like ass. blurry textures, ugly environments, complete mediocrity.